Friday, June 12, 2015

Friday Fun - I love Rock 'n' Roll…

Pink Heart Society regular, Joss Wood, is musing upon the importance of music...

Friday fun, Ali said and I really didn’t
know what I was going to write about for today’s blog. When I was watching The
Voice tonight—huge, huge, beeeg fan!!—and I thought, that’s it, music! Before I go any further, I would like to
categorically state that I adore The Voice because it’s the one talent show where
it’s more important to have an amazing voice than to be one of life’s beautiful
people.

The fact that I think that Adam Levine is
clothes-shedding-ly gorgeous and that I could watch him all night is
co-incidental.

I always write with music playing in the
background; it could be Mozart, country and eighties tunes, sometimes all
three, but there’s always something there. Music is a source of inspiration for
me, a line might inspire a thought or a motivation is clarified.

So here is a musical journey through my
life.

My
parents weren’t particularly musical and I don’t remember much music being
played in our home but the first song I remember hearing is Tie a Yellow Ribbon by
Tony Orlando. 1973! I was three! Puff the Magic Dragon was
another song I remember from my childhood and I think I drove my parents bats
singing it.

On that note you should know that I can’t sing; no, seriously, I’m
not exaggerating. I cannot sing…apparently
I can sing Happy Birthday because that’s I how I made it into the school choir,
to be asked to leave half way through our first practice. But I do sing, much
to my kids’ embarrassment. This is me.

Onto the eighties…this was the height of
apartheid in SA so there were the brilliant anti-apartheid songs that we
adored.Eddy Grant’s Give Me Hope Joanna, Johnny Clegg and Savuka’s Asimbonanga and Paul Simon’s Homeless with Ladysmith Black Mambazo (who come from my
town by the way!) are a couple that come to mind.

Other songs from the eighties still bring back
memories for me; I remember slow dancing with my first love to Wham’s
Careless Whisper,
singing in the school bus on the way back from a hockey or tennis match to
Queen’s I Want To Break
Free and bawling my eyes out to Roxette’s It Must Have Been Love
when above mentioned boyfriend broke my heart.

The nineties…skip that decade. Were there any good songs from the nineties? I
can’t remember any off the top of my head. Today? Mmm, my son provides me with most
of my music these days and he has fairly good taste. Owl City, The Killers, One
Republic, The Script are all favourites. I like Meghan Trainor for the positive
messages she is putting out there Dear Future Husband and Ed Sheeran is brilliant - Lego House is my
daughter’s and her best friends' favourite song at the moment.

There is some amazing
South African music; try the Parlotones Push Me To The Floor, Beatenberg’s Rafael or Mafikizolo’s
Ndihamba Nawe (love, love,
love that song!) Or if you want
something totally off the wall try Die Antwoord.

But really, when it comes down to it, I’m a
writer and I look for stories or songs that resonate with me. I love songs that tell a story…really tell a story and I find those
mostly in country music. Examples of these songs are Tim McGraw’s Live Like You Were Dying, Garth Brookes The
Thunder Rolls and Sugarland’s Shine The Light.

Wow, I could do this all day but I should,
actually, do some work.

So, I leave you with one more video, the
tribute video to Paul Walker by Wiz Khalifa ft Charlie Puth…See You Again. So sweet,
so sad.

What music defines your life? And do you have specific music that you write to? Join us in the comments!

Joss's latest book, One Night, Two Consequences, is available now at Mills and Boonand everywhere else in July:

Beautiful
free-spirited Remy Draycott doesn’t believe in happy-ever-afters. A former
child prodigy, she’s finally shaken free of the world’s expectations and is
determined to live for the moment—including one scorching, unforgettable night
with handsome stranger Bo Tessier!

Billionaire
wine magnate Bo never expects to see Remy again—their mind-blowing night
together felt like playing with fire, except he wanted to get burned! But six
weeks later Remy returns. She’s pregnant—with twins! And this time he can’t let
her go so easily…

1 comment:

I write in complete silence but I've started to wonder if I should pop something on and see what happens. The one song that really gets me going when I run is Man Like That by the absolutely fabulously kick-ass New Zealander Gin Wigmore, so that's the one I think I'm going to try first.